The Sneaky Costs in Guacamole

Certainly one thing on everyone’s mind today is price.  Inflation, scarcity in the supply chain, and labor constraints have tacked on dollars.  It is when these costs sneak in that margins go down.  You may think that costs can be passed down to the final consumer, but in reality that is easier said than done.  So operators need to think strategically on other areas of savings to recover shrinking margins.

Let’s take a look at the hidden cost with guacamole and understand where they are so they can be turned into points of saving, because the worst type of cost are the ones that sneak around un-noticed from an operator’s calculations.  Before we begin, we need to realize that the guacamole product served to customers is not solely factored on the price of the ingredients, but you’ll find the sneaky costs in labor, waste, food safety, and shipping.

Labor

Our first sneaky cost is the time involved in prepping guacamole. Labor in foodservice is especially tight and when wages have increased and there is higher turnover, is having your team members spending hours back of house preparing guacamole the best use of their time?  Fresh, premade guacamole is readily available and can be used as a base for your specific recipe and frees up your team’s time for other tasks like customer service front of house.  An easy way to see the costs of guacamole prep is to multiply the time in halving and scooping avocados and multiply it by your team member’s hourly rate.

Waste 

The next sneaky costs comes from waste.  Now there is obvious waste with avocados as the skin and pits are unusable for guacamole and thrown in the trash.  Have you considered the cost of unusable fruit?  Avocado ripening is a tricky art and you may have some of your fruit ripen at a different point than the rest, and managing the timing of fruit ripening is an added complexity to your operation.  When it is not managed, that is valuable fruit going into the trash.  Pre-made leaves this with the production experts so that you receive a pouch of guacamole with 100% yield and 0% complexities.

Food Safety

A potentially costly sneaky costs is food safety. It is far easier to remember a restaurant that screwed up, so the loss of brand reputation and customer trust is very costly.  That is where we again point to one of the biggest advantages of a pre-made product is its robust food safety practice and regulation.  With guacamole, the avocado goes through HPP processing, or high pressure pasteurization.  This process assures that all harmful bacteria is eliminated and with product immediately bagged, there is no chance for contamination unless the packaging is breached.  The other bonus is that this process works without the use of chemicals or any other additives.  

Shipping

Our final sneak costs is shipping.  Time is money, especially when product has a limited shelf like as we see with fresh produce items. Avocados have a long supply chain with many links because the fruit comes in from Mexico, Chile, and Peru.  That is where we take all the benefits of using a prepared avocado product and add that final value point of having it ready and waiting in our US coolers.  It gives you a quality guacamole with some of those sneaky costs removed, and has it ready and waiting in the US ready to add to any order.  This shortens what is normally a long shipping time so that it arrives fresh and delicious to your customers.